|
It
all began with a dream and a mechanical disc. In 1882, a French artist
by the name of Albert Robida had a prophetic vision, one so accurate, we
are seeing it today - its called home theater.
He
did a series of drawings which depicted seeing adventure shows, shopping
channels, musicals - and even public television. Perhaps the artist was
influenced by an article in English Mechanic Magazine in 1880? Or Samuel
Morse proving signals could be sent via wires over great distances, as
early as 1844. And in 1888, German Physicist Heinrich Hertz gave the
first demonstration that signals could be sent via wireless. But in
1884, German Scientist, Paul Nipkow patents the first television
scanning disc.
However, Paul would not capitalize on his patent, others would build on
his idea. One of those individuals would be John Logie Baird, a
self-taught Scotsman who brought the Nipkow disc to life, along with
Charles Francis Jenkins. In October 1925, Baird would succeed in
transmitting the head of a wax dummy named "Stookie Bill" via mechanical
means. Television's first human television star would be William
Taynton, an office boy he stuck in front of the hot lights.
The Baird "Televisor" produced the image you see at the top of this
column. However, Baird never had any commercial success of his invention
- and neither would Jenkins' with his "shadow" tv.
It
would take a fourteen year-old Idaho farmboy plowing a field on a crisp
spring morning in 1921 to invent "all-electronic" television as we know
it. Philo Farnsworth was helping his father prepare the fields for
planting when the idea of scanning lines for television entered his
mind. Philo had a working model by the time he was 21 years-old!
Farnsworth almost lost out on his right as "The Father Of Television"
when he allowed a curious researcher by the name of Peter Zworykin from
RCA to see his invention before he registered it with the U.S. Patent
Office. Philo's backers hearing of this, made him take out patents on
his inventions immediately - keeping David Sarnoff's RCA from beating
him to the punch! RCA's lawyers had tears in their eye's (the General
was making their lives hell) when they worked out royalty payments to
Philo. However, even with the success of Philo's business venture in
building commercial tv sets for retail, he couldn't beat the RCA machine
when it came to production of the units, and a problem with alcohol and
business missteps left him broke in the end.
RCA would
like you to believe it invented color television...uh, not so fast RCA!
The truth is AT&T's Bell Labs started working on color tv in 1927, and
held its first demonstration of a mechanical format in June 1929.
For Bell, it held no commercial viability, so the famed Bell Labs passed
on any further development.
And RCA's Public Relations Department would have you believe that it's
NBC was the first network to present color on network television...not
quite! The first FCC approved color television transmission system went
to CBS! After RCA began its first inaugural broadcast of "all
electronic" television at New York's World's Fair on April 20th, 1939,
the technology was already a little dated. Research on color television
began in 1889 by Russian scientist, Polumordvinov when he applied for a
patent on the heels of Nipkow's patents in 1884. However, the Russian
scientist was not able to produce a working model.
In
March 1940, a young engineer and his bride went to a movie house in
Montreal, Canada. The movie he saw was "Gone With The Wind" starring
Clark Gable. Peter Goldmark joined CBS in 1935, and was the head of CBS
Labs - the network's technical division. Peter and his wife were blown
away by the Technicolor technology of the film, that Peter decided, is
what his next project should be - color television. It wasn't easy, but
he had CBS President Frank Stanton in his corner. CBS wanted so badly to
beat the great RCA at something! Goldmark was well aware of the work
done by John Logie Baird and other inventors trying to bring color
television to the forefront - but their failure had been trying to make
it work with a purely mechanical system based on the Nipkow disc. Peter
decided to marry the mechanical to the electronic in creating what
became known as CBS Color. The above is an early experimental sequential
color camera developed by Goldmark and his team.
The color tv receiver offered a small picture in a really big box - that
was needed, since the cabinet had to contain a spinning disc and its
motor. The camera itself required a long tube on the side to optically
convert the black and white signal to color. Most of the television
manufactures were up in arms over CBS color, knowing the loss they faced
with their monotone system, and the fact that RCA and they had a heavy
investment in black and white technology that they had yet to pay off.
CBS color was so good, that the FCC gave them the green light to both
broadcast in color and manufacture commercial color tv sets in 1950. But
the victory didn't last long. First, only a handful of television
manufacturers like Farnsworth agreed to produce color tv sets of CBS
design, causing the network to buy a company called Hytron to
manufacturer sets under its own name. Hytron turned out to be a big
mistake for CBS. And another curious thing happened - on December 17th,
1953, through the urging of FCC Commissioner Fox, reversed its decision
and chose the RCA-based NTSC color tv system. A year later, Comissioner
Fox resigned his FCC post and joined RCA.
The first RCA Color Tv Set was called the Merrill, however to most tech
fans, it's referred to as the RCA CT-100. While RCA developed the
all-electronic color system, Westinghouse beat them to the market by one
month with their model. And until recently, here in North America, the
RCA-based system of Compatible Color has held sway. But that is
changing...
The FCC
mandated that tv stations around the country would turn off their NTSC
color transmitters at midnight local time on February 17th, 2009 when
analog broadcast systems shuffle off to history. The new High Definition
Digital Signals are not compatible, meaning any analog-based tv set
becomes an instant dinosaur. One can get a converter box to receive
digital signals - however, it will not be high definition. There are two
reasons the FCC made its decision to go with digital signals - first,
its indeed superior to analog transmission - second, digital signals
have a much smaller bandwidth, yet allow more channels to fit within
that signal. The frequencies that are abandoned will be reassigned for
other services.
 |
